Karl Popper

Karl Raimund Popper CH FBA FRS[4] (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian-British[5] philosopher and professor at the London School of Economics.[6] He is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century.[7][8] Popper is known for his rejection of the classical inductivist views on the scientific method, in favour of empirical falsification: A theory in the empirical sciences can never be proven, but it can be falsified, meaning that it can and should be scrutinized by decisive experiments. If the outcome of an experiment contradicts the theory, one should refrain from ad hoc manoeuvres that evade the contradiction merely by making it less falsifiable. Personal life[edit] Family and training[edit] Karl Popper was born in Vienna (then in Austria-Hungary) in 1902, to upper middle-class parents. He worked in street construction for a short amount of time, but was unable to cope with the heavy labour. Academic life[edit] Honours and awards[edit]

Theaetetus (dialogue)Euclides is prompted to share his book when Terpsion wonders where he had been: Euclides, who apparently can usually be found in the marketplace of Megara, was walking outside of the city and had happened upon Theaetetus being carried from Corinth to Athens with a case of dysentery and a minor war wound; Euclides remarks that Socrates had made some uncanny predictions about Theaetetus needing to rise to fame. Euclides' book is read aloud to the two men by a slave boy in the employ of Euclides. In this dialogue, Socrates and Theaetetus discuss three definitions of knowledge: knowledge as nothing but perception, knowledge as true judgment, and, finally, knowledge as a true judgment with an account. Each of these definitions is shown to be unsatisfactory. The conversation ends with Socrates' announcement that he has to go to court to answer to the charges that he has been corrupting the young and failing to worship Athenian gods.

A Japanese Soldier Who Continued Fighting WWII 29 Years After the Japanese Surrendered, Because He Didn’t KnowToday I Found Out about a Japanese soldier who continued fighting World War II a full 29 years after the Japanese surrendered, because he didn’t know the war was over. Hiroo Onoda is a Japanese citizen that originally worked at a Chinese trading company. When he was 20 years old, he was called to join the Japanese army. He promptly quit his job and headed off to training in Japan. At a certain point in his training, he was chosen to be trained at Nakano School as an Imperial Army Intelligence Officer.

MetaphysicsMetaphysics is a traditional branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world that encompasses it,[1] although the term is not easily defined.[2] Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:[3] Ultimately, what is there?What is it like? Prior to the modern history of science, scientific questions were addressed as a part of metaphysics known as natural philosophy.

A tribute to Prince Charles, champion of anti-science, on his 65th birthdayToday, Prince Charles celebrates his 65th birthday. He is one of the world’s most tenacious, outspoken and influential proponent of alternative medicine and attacker of science - sufficient reason, I think, to join the birthday-celebrations by outlining a chronology of his love affair with quackery. The following post highlights just a few events (there are so many more!) which I happen to find interesting.

RealityNot to be confused with Realty. Philosophers, mathematicians, and other ancient and modern thinkers, such as Aristotle, Plato, Frege, Wittgenstein, and Russell, have made a distinction between thought corresponding to reality, coherent abstractions (thoughts of things that are imaginable but not real), and that which cannot even be rationally thought. By contrast existence is often restricted solely to that which has physical existence or has a direct basis in it in the way that thoughts do in the brain.List of paradoxesThis is a list of paradoxes, grouped thematically. The grouping is approximate, as paradoxes may fit into more than one category. Because of varying definitions of the term paradox, some of the following are not considered to be paradoxes by everyone. This list collects only scenarios that have been called a paradox by at least one source and have their own article.

Pick of the week: Noam Chomsky and Michel Gondry, together at lastHow does one explain the fact that a leading figure in analytic philosophy and linguistic theory – abstruse academic fields that are not readily comprehensible to the layperson and have almost no practical or everyday resonance – has become America’s most prominent public intellectual and its leading anarcho-libertarian voice of dissent? Needless to say, most people who have read Noam Chomsky’s numerous works of political polemics about American imperialism, the mass media and the Middle East have not read “Language and the Study of Mind,” let alone “Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew.” But there is a relationship between the two Chomskys, and also a person behind them, whom almost nobody knows.

Problem of universalsWhile philosophers agree that human beings talk and think about properties, they disagree on whether these universals exist in reality or merely in thought and speech. Positions[edit] The main positions on the issue are generally considered to be: realism, nominalism, and idealism (sometimes simply called "anti-realism" with regard to universals).[4] Realism[edit] The realist school claims that universals are real — they exist and are distinct from the particulars that instantiate them.ALDOUS HUXLEY takes LSD on deathbed | The Dreamatists“On the morning of November 22nd, a Friday, it became clear the gap between living and dying was closing. Realizing that Aldous [Huxley] might not survive the day, Laura [Huxley's wife] sent a telegram to his son, Matthew, urging him to come at once. At ten in the morning, an almost inaudible Aldous asked for paper and scribbled “If I go” and then some directions about his will.

HolomovementThe holomovement is a key concept in David Bohm's interpretation of quantum mechanics and for his overall worldview. It brings together the holistic principle of "undivided wholeness" with the idea that everything is in a state of process or becoming (or what he calls the "universal flux"). For Bohm, wholeness is not a static oneness, but a dynamic wholeness-in-motion in which everything moves together in an interconnected process. The concept is presented most fully in Wholeness and the Implicate Order, published in 1980.Kurt Gödel1. Biographical Sketch Kurt Gödel was born on April 28, 1906 in what was then the Austro-Hungarian city of Brünn, and what is now Brno in the Czech Republic. Gödel's father Rudolf August was a businessman, and his mother Marianne was a well-educated and cultured woman to whom Gödel remained close throughout his life, as witnessed by the long and wide-ranging correspondence between them.

“The Punk Singer”: Kathleen Hanna’s riotous lifeAt the dawn of the 1990s, two streams of cultural revolution appeared to have burned themselves out. Time magazine ran a cover story asking whether feminism was dead, using the neurotic, relationship-obsessed heroine of “Ally McBeal” as a symbol of contemporary womanhood. Punk rock, which many people of my generation had seized on as a form of idealistic and/or nihilistic resistance to the Reagan years, had either been commercialized into radio-friendly pop music or ossified into the marginal, macho and sometimes violent hardcore scene. Then came Kathleen Hanna, who crashed those two streams together in messy, glorious and spectacular fashion, and they weren’t dead after all. Of course it’s not that simple; nothing ever boils down to just one person in the end.

Dialectical monismDialectical Monism Principles[edit] Ideas relating to "teleological evolution" are important in some progressive interpretations of dialectical monism. However, this element has not always been present historically, and is generally not present in contemporary dialectical monisms such as Taoism.Archaeologists Discover Site Where Desperate Jesus Christ Turned TricksJERUSALEM—In a stunning discovery that archaeologists hope might shed light on the little-known years between Jesus Christ’s childhood and his ministry, the Israel Antiquities Authority uncovered Monday what they believe to be the site where, in the years before he began his itinerant preaching, a desperate, cash-strapped Christ briefly turned tricks for money. Excavators working in the Beit Hanina neighborhood of Jerusalem unveiled fragments of several earthenware vessels, an 18-seat public latrine hewn from stone and terra cotta piping dating to Jesus’ era, along with a curbed Roman road that served as a main artery of ancient Judea, where the fledgling, hard-up prophet is believed to have cruised for johns passing by on donkeys, wagons, and chariots.

Absolutely no amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong. Thanx Einstein. by ramasysdevApr 28

The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1972, 3rd edn.) that the nature of scientific method is hypothetico–deductive and not, as is generally believed, inductive. by raviiiApr 28